How To Pass Your Real Estate Salesperson Exam The First Time You Take The Test!
I don’t know who has heard this story who hasn’t heard this story but I’m gonna share it again anyway I got my real estate license at a very young age and it was back in 1996 or 97 if I’m not mistaken. I was fresh out of high school and my father threw me into a real estate school over in Pasadena. I didn’t really know if I was gonna pursue this as a career, I didn’t know what I was going to do, I was on my way to UCLA at the time so I really wasn’t very interested, I wasn’t really focused, right, so I went to this real estate school and I completed the course and then I went to take the State Exam, and because you know I didn’t take it as serious as I should have I didn’t pass the State Exam the first time.
However, the second time I was more determined and I decided that I was going to pass this state exam and I didn’t care what it took I was going to pass, so this is back in the late 90s and what I did was I used an old Texas Instrument, scientific calculators, okay, they’re the really really big ones that you can show sin and cos, wave signs, and all that stuff on it, okay, and you can program it to learn formulas, so this is way before the days of texting guys, okay, way before the days of texting and I had this calculator and it didn’t have a 40 keyboard but I decided that I was going to program that calculator and I was going to put all the answers in it, and this is where you have to press a button three times to get the letter that you wanted.
Anyways, I programmed the hell out of this calculator, so in a nutshell what I was doing was I was cheating, okay, now mind you in retrospect you gotta understand how bad that really is, now I’m only about 18/19 years old but I am trying to cheat on a government administered test, okay, so I’m programming this calculator and I spend about two to three weeks putting all the answers into this calculator and then I show up for the day of the exam and I’m excited right because I’m thinking man this is going to be a piece of cake, I have my calculator, I programmed it, it has all the answers and then I show up and I turn the calculator on and all of a sudden it starts to flicker and the battery dies because I’ve been using it so much, okay, long story short I was able to pass the exam right and I got my real estate license but I didn’t have to cheat my way through it, right, god works in a weird ways doesn’t he, okay.
What I wanted to do was share with you guys a couple of tips on how to pass the State Exam, all right, and some of you heard me share this and some of you haven’t but I’m going to cover this really really quick just so that you guys understand the best way to study this, so here is typically how most people study, they give you the question, right, and then they give you A, B, C, and D, and they give you the options, right, well what most people do is they will read this question and then they will say I don’t know the answer to that question and then what they’ll do is they’ll read all four options, right, and I don’t want you doing that, okay, because what’s going to happen is you’re gonna study this way and you’re going to go take the State Exam and when you take the State Exam you’re going to say to yourself you know I remember reading that somewhere, okay, so you guys I don’t want you to do this.
Tip Number #1
I want you to memorize a question find out what the correct answer is, focus on that correct answer, memorize only that, and then move on to the next question. Do this in sets of ten so you do this one through ten your question answer question answer question answer, and then you move on, once you’ve done one through ten then I want you to do one through twenty, once you’ve got those ten mastered I want you to go back and do one through thirty, and each time you’re going back and you’re recapping the original ten that you had memorized before, right, and by doing that what you’re doing is you’re just memorizing the question and the answer and that’s all I want you to focus on and I guarantee you that you will pass the State Exam doing it this way, okay.
I know that there’s some of you who are smarter than me trust me I know this, okay, I am a perfect example of how you don’t have to be too sharp to make it in this business, okay, and we have had people that have come through the ranks of the school and I’m talking about very very educated people, we have had doctors, and we have had attorneys and lawyers come through our real estate school and one of the conversations that they have with me often is “Well Paul you know what I appreciate what you’re saying here but I’m the type of person that really needs to understand what this stuff means, okay, I mean I really gotta understand it so I want to read the book,” look those are great books if you’re having a tough night and you want to get to sleep, get a warm glass of milk and start reading our text books, okay, all right, my point is is that a lot of this information you just need to regurgitate it to pass the State Exam, a lot of it unfortunately while it is important I’m not saying it’s not valid information it won’t be used in practical real-world application when we’re out there on the field, but you need to know this stuff in order to get your state exam, so my recommendation is study the question and study the answer and that’s all I want you focusing on. Can you guys promise me that you’re gonna do that, okay, so that’s the first thing.
Tip Number #2
I really want you to commit to yourself about scheduling your state exam, all right, I can’t tell you the number of people that I’ve seen that have come in they’ve graduated and then what they do is they don’t go and they don’t register for the state exam, and so what happens is out of sight out of mind, okay, who has ever skipped a day at the gym, anyone, who has then skipped a week at the gym then that week turned into what a month then their month turned into two months and then it just kept escalating it’s happened to all of us, okay, and so if you don’t do this now trust me you’ll thank me later if you don’t go and register yourself for the state exam as soon as possible you’ll keep putting it off, why, because life has a way of getting in the way if that makes sense, things happen, okay, so I want you guys all to commit that you’re gonna go and you’re gonna register to take that state exam.
It’s not that difficult, is there a fee involved yes there’s an additional fee involved you’re gonna have to pay the fee but I want you to do it as soon as you possibly can don’t put it off okay and here’s the thing sometimes I hear people tell me “Well you know I really want to make sure that I’m more prepared before I do that,” okay the truth is there is never going to be a perfect time to do anything significant, okay, period you guys I heard somebody tell me the other day I need to lose some weight so I can look good when I go to the gym, okay, how ass-backwards is that type of thinking, right, okay, see the truth is the stars aren’t gonna be aligned the timing isn’t gonna be right your finances will never be perfect nothing is ever going to work out exactly the right way so that you can say okay I’m gonna take my state exam it’s just not, wipe that idea out of your mind, I like to call those kind of ideas real estate porn it doesn’t exist, okay, my point is it’s never gonna be exactly perfect okay it’s just not going to be, register for the State Exam now, if you can do it tonight do it tonight just knock it out, get it out of the way, okay. You’ll thank me because I’ve seen great people, people that I know could have had phenomenal careers in real estate take too long and then later on I’d never see them come back to the business, okay, now look some of you are getting involved just because you want to get your license just to have it if it’s anything that’s the same way I was I had no idea what it was gonna turn into for me I didn’t know what it was gonna be I wasn’t sure it was gonna be a career I tried a few different things and that’s great and then there’s some of you who are gonna get involved just because you know you want to become investors and some of you’re gonna do it because you have friends and family in the business and you want to help them out, whatever your reason might be you’re gonna need that license, so just register now and get it done, okay.
Look I appreciate all you guys taking your time to read this and I want you to know that you have an amazing support system not only in your family and friends but everyone. In any endeavor there’s ups and downs in life, yes or no, yes there is right don’t blame real estate for their ups and downs, all right, that happens in any profession so it’s amazing how sometimes we’ll see people get started and just because they don’t have immediate success in the first three to four months they’re blaming the profession “uh you know it doesn’t work,” right let’s be real here folks in any real profession whatever it may be medical, what else, law, what else, athlete CPA, accounting, there’s difficulty, but don’t quit.
